


Load-carrying Capacity

by saltslimes



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: AU, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, In a sense, M/M, Sickfic, healer/magic boy!prom, really nasty au i came up with to torment u all, there's vomit now and worse vomit later jsyk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-22
Updated: 2018-04-24
Packaged: 2019-04-26 06:28:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,817
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14396247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saltslimes/pseuds/saltslimes
Summary: Prompto can do magic. All he has to do is will an object or an injury to be fixed and it is. Naturally, it comes at a steep cost.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> uhhhhhh what do you expect at this point, it's more h/c, kind of a refined, slow-burn h/c this time, hope u enjoi

“Everything has a cost. If you think something is free, you just don’t know what it costs yet.” As grim as this sounds, it was part of a lecture Prompto got when he was seven and whining at his mom in the grocery store. She meant well, probably.

The first time he used magic to repair something it was almost deceptively easy. One moment he was sitting on his bed holding back tears because it was his  _ new _ lens-- the one he’d worked months to buy, doing jobs for neighbours and begging his parents to increase his allowance. He stared at the crack and willed it to be gone with every cell in his body.

Light seared his retinas. And when he was able to see again, the lens was whole. He turned it over in his hands, held it up to the light. It was fixed, just like that. Magic had burned down his arms and flooded his fingertips and just… done his bidding.

He was so stunned he sat on his bed for five minutes just staring at the lens. Then he was giddy with excitement. He fixed something! Somehow, he of all people could use magic, and he could use it to fix broken things! That was just about one of the best powers he could think of. That was some serious comic book shit. He put questions of whether it had anything to do with the barcode snug and secure under his wristband out of his mind. 

An hour later his fingertips were numb. They hurt if he pressed on them.

 

Everything has a cost. That’s the thing. That’s a lesson Prompto got young, but he didn’t start learning it until he was almost a teenager.

 

xXx

 

It wasn’t  _ just _ a game. It was Chocobo Collective Racing 2, and it was Prompto who broke it, which made it so much worse. They’d logged more hours on it than any other game. It had been, at first, the reason for Noct inviting him over most days after school. Prompto picked up the two pieces of the cartridge and cradled them like a broken baby bird.

“Think it’ll still work?” Noct said, but there was about zero optimism in his voice.

“I wouldn’t expect so.” Ignis was still sitting at the kitchen table buffing the smears out of the flatware like there isn’t a momentous tragedy happening in front of them.

“But it’s Chocobo Collective Racing 2!” Prompto said, like that might help impress upon Ignis the importance.

“Man. This sucks. I got that--uh, before.”

It felt like Prompto’s heart stuttered in his chest.

“I’m sorry,” Prompto said. Noct waved a hand.

“Hey man, it was an accident, don’t worry about it.” And he meant that, which made it way worse.

Prompto looked back at the game in his hands, and he just  _ wanted _ so badly for it to be intact. He screwed his eyes shut and for a second, heat flared through his palms.

“Um. What the  _ fuck _ ?”

“Noctis?” There was the scrape of Ignis’s chair by the counter, and when Prompto opened his eyes Noctis was blinking at him like he’d had a camera flash popped in his face and Ignis was leaning over his shoulder inquisitively. And the cartridge was in one piece again.

“How the--you can do  _ magic _ ?”

“I-I didn’t mean to! I mean, I didn’t know I  _ could _ !” He saw Ignis from the corner of his eye, scrutinizing his face. But Noctis was beaming--Noctis was bowled over. He took the cartridge from Prompto, turned it over and shook it like he was testing a magician’s trick. But the cartridge remained solid. It didn’t melt into leaves like fairy gold in some old story, or crack back apart.

“You’ve never done that before? How’d you make it happen?”

“I don’t think--wait, once when I was a kid. I always thought maybe I dreamed that.” Prompto rubbed the hair at the back of his neck. Noct snorted. “I just concentrated, and there.”

“Huh. Maybe you draw power from the King, like the glaives. Specs, you think that’s possible?”

Ignis adjusted his glasses before answering. He plucked the cartridge from Noct’s fingers and turned it over.

“Hmm, perhaps. I wonder how he would tap into the power without the King’s blessing, though.” He handed the game back to Prompto. “A useful power to have, nonetheless,” he said, but his gaze lingered on Prompto a little long, and he felt like the skin on his wrist was itching--or rather, he felt like the skin on his wrist was begging to be peeled off.

They booted up the game and found their saves wiped, but it ran flawlessly. An hour or so into playing Prompto felt his fingers cramp up so hard his eyes watered. He went into the bathroom and shook his hands out and splashed some cold water on his face. He felt off balance, overheated, a little drunk.

There was a half inch of black crawling up from his nail beds. So he pulled his sweater down over his hands and returned to the living room.

“You up for another stage?”

“Dinner is going to be ready in a moment,” Ignis cut in. Prom reorganized his face into a grin.

“Ah, sorry, but my mom wants me home! Next time!” he said. He tried not to fixate on the way Noctis’ smile slipped. He tried not to commit it to memory at all.

When he was eating cold rice in his empty house, he had to switch to a spoon because his numb fingers kept fumbling the chopsticks. He peeled off the sweatband and inspected the barcode underneath. Not faded, not stretched even a little with age, it look clean enough to set off a grocery store scanner (something he had once considered trying, however briefly). 

Wouldn’t it be nice if Noctis was right, and he drew power from the King just like the glaives. But he had this roiling feeling in his gut, this sweat on the back of his neck, this shred of half-memory. Metal walls. Tubes going into him and out from him. Something thick and rotten in his veins. He pulled the wristband back on and dumped the rest of the rice in the garbage. It was well past tasting good anyways.

xXx

It wasn’t so bad that time with the video game. But when Prompto was in his last year of high school, the washing machine broke down, and he was still waiting on a reply to his week-old texts about where to get replacement parts for the vacuum and how to unclog the sink (two things he had already moogled and figured out by then) so he figured asking them was pointless.

Moogle got him to the problem, and then provided him a solution. Sometimes the problem is: your washing machine is irreparably broken, and the solution is: buy a new washing machine. But if he bought a new washing machine he wouldn’t make rent twice over. That was… impossible. He chewed on a thumbnail while his phone vibrated on top of the busted washer, then grimaced when he realized his fingers still had grody old grease on them.

Noctis was blowing up his phone with a slew of incomprehensible emojis (which generally meant he was blind-texting under the table at a meeting). He fired off a “get ur princely duties, loser” message, and started putting the washer back together. Once it was a whole thing he stood up, took a deep breath, put both hands on it and willed it unbroken.

The lights came on on the front. It gave the delightful little “ding” that it did when a load was finished. Then Prompto blacked out.

When he came to it was an hour later, his phone was glutted with Noctis-in-meeting texts, and the washing machine was still fixed. He took a moment to grin to himself before bile surged up his throat, and he had to scramble for the bathroom. He made it as far as the sink, where he coughed half-digested cereal and stomach acid, and then spent a few minutes washing the mess down the drain and brushing his teeth at the same time.

He was too tired to even retrieve his phone, and opted to just fall into bed.

 

“Dude, you look terrible today.”

“Thanks Noctis, you look like a shitty nerd.” Prompto tried not to squirm. Sunlight hurt. It felt like his skin was too tight. It felt like all his clothing had been replaced with sandpaper.

“First of all,” Noct began, slinging a hand over Prompto’s shoulder, which  _ ow _ , he tried not to flinch at, “you and I both know you’re the one who’s a shitty nerd.”

“Whatever, Mr. King’s Knight boxers.”

“Hey! Those are cool! Ignis got them for me!”

“Everything about that sentence is soooo lame, Noct.”

“Whatever.” Noctis gave Prompto a playful shove. He tried not to stagger, but Noctis must have noticed something. “Hey, seriously, are you okay? You look more tired than me after a meeting.”

“I was just up late studying.” Prompto didn’t know why he was lying. The longer he had to think about it, the less he knew. He could have told Noctis about the washing machine, but it felt like he’d be pulling at a string, and a thousand things he didn’t want to talk about would unravel. So he shrugged it off, rode out a long wave of nausea in the bathroom, went home with some excuse about helping his parents clean the house, and slept the remainder of the day away.

And the next morning he felt better. He felt fine. So three things seemed clear: 

  1. He did, in fact, have control over the power. He could will it to happen when he wanted.
  2. There was an upper limit to what he could repair. If it was a flexible limit was yet unclear.
  3. His magic, if he could call it that, was _poisonous._



The last thing he fixed before setting out on the road trip to Noctis’s wedding was a mug. The handle broke off in his hand while Ignis had his back turned and he panicked and just  _ pushed _ it back together. And Ignis turned back to see him sipping his tea like nothing had happened. Ten minutes later he excused himself and dry-heaved into the sink, but it passed in almost an instant. His fingers didn’t go numb. He felt strong, for once. He felt kind of kick-ass.

He should have been remembering what his mother told him. But she was more a myth than a person in his head at that point. She was the theory of a person, and in practice, she was no one.

xXx

The rain is just spitting, not really enough to get them wet but enough to make it cold. Noctis has recovered himself when they get over there, and his elbow is bleeding, but not badly. Ignis crushes a potion against him as soon as they get over there.

“It wasn’t even that bad, Specs,” Noctis says.

“Better safe than sorry,” Ignis counters. He looks back over to Gladio and Prompto, now that his Noctis-Bleeding tunnel vision has abated.

“Is she okay?” Noctis jogs over to meet them, and Ignis follows. Gladio is crouched down and Prompto is on his knees stroking the bird’s head. Her eyes are half-shut.

“It’s not great,” Prompto says.

“Like… die not great?” Noctis asks, and Ignis sees him working not to avert his eyes from the injured chocobo.

“No, not that bad. But I don’t know how we’re going to get her back to the Wiz like this…”

“Her leg is messed up bad,” Gladio fills in.

“Hmm.” Ignis taps his chin, and he feels three gazes shift over to him, but truthfully, he doesn’t have any answers anyone will like. Noctis chews his lip for a second.

“Your call, Noct,” Gladio says.

“Specs, got any ideas?” Noct immediately counters. Ignis uncrosses his arms, resting his hands on his hips.

“That was our last potion. Seems to me the wisest option would be to return without the injured bird.”

“Ignis, what!” Prompto cries.

“And, if you would let me finish, perhaps procure a curative and return.”

“Still,” Gladio says.

“She’d be daemon food before we got back,” Noctis says. Prompto leans in, touching his forehead to the chocobo’s fluffy crown. There’s a burst of white light, like a camera flash. Ignis blinks. 

“What the fuck?” Gladio says.

“Whoaaa, you did the thing!” Noctis cries. Prompto peels open one eye and laughs, a little shakily.

“I did. I didn’t know it worked on alive stuff!”

“Wait, the magic thing?” Gladio looks to Ignis. That was an odd conversation they had, one that actually led to a conversation with the Marshall, but he had assured them the people who needed to know about it already knew. 

But now Prompto is beaming, bouncing with elated energy. Noctis carefully re-mounts the chocobo, who is chirping happily and tugging at Prompto’s clothes. 

“Let’s go!” Noctis calls.

“She’s really okay, huh?” Gladio says, giving Noct’s chocobo a light pat. Ignis examines the animal. Her eyes are bright, she’s scratching at the earth like she wants to move… he glances back at the other chocobos. She almost looks  _ healthier _ than them, with her glossy coat and unruffled feathers. It is still spitting on them though, and it could start raining any time.

“It would seem wise to get back on the road,” he says. So they go. Halfway back, he passes Prompto on his chocobo, and glances over his shoulder to see him gripping the saddle white-knuckled, staring at nothing.

“Prompto,” he calls, but gets no response of acknowledgement. “Prompto.”

“Huh? Oh, ‘sup Iggy? Need something?”

“I was merely wondering what planet you might be on.”

“Uhhh, this one?”

“Right. Naturally.” 

When they get back to the caravan, Prompto calls dibs and slips into the shower before Gladio can so much as open his mouth. When he looks to Ignis like he expects some retribution, Ignis merely shrugs.

“As our leader, I feel Noctis has outlined the ‘dibs’ rule quite clearly,” Ignis says evenly. As someone who strongly prefers cold showers, he himself never has an issue going last. He chops carrots while Gladio scowls on the couch pretending to read and Noctis falls asleep in the middle of King’s Knight and drops his phone on his face.

Past the ten minute mark, Gladio gets up to hammer on the door, but Prompto bursts out in a cloud of steam, flushed head-to-toe.

“All yours big guy,” he says brightly, diving into bed to smack Noctis with his wet towel.

“Prompto aughhh!” Noctis cries, and Ignis merely shakes his head despairingly.

“Perhaps you two would like to help me with dinner.”

“Not really, no,” Noctis says.

“Cominnng,” Prompto says, but there’s a few minutes of giggling and whisper-fighting before he actually gets up and comes over. “What do I do?”

“If you’d chop these potatoes for me.” Ignis slides the cutting board his direction.

“You got it! Potatoes, get ready to meet your maker! Wait. That would be, like, a farmer.”

“Perhaps the existentialism is not required for this recipe,” Ignis suggests. In a minute or so Gladio has traded off the bathroom with Noctis, Ignis is done with the carrots and the onions and garlic and Prompto is… still chopping potatoes.

“Are they giving you trouble?” Ignis asks, resting a hand on his hip. Prompto startles like he’s been shocked.

“Uh, no! I dunno, I just zoned out a minute. Can I… I’m gonna grab some air just for a second.” And without waiting for a response, Prompto abandons the knife and bounds out of the caravan. Ignis meets Gladio’s gaze, frowning.

Gladio glances in the direction of the door.

“That’s weird, right?”

“Hmm.” Ignis glances at the door too, but he returns his attention to measuring the spices. And right when he is about to put down his spoon and go out there, Prompto comes back in.

“Sorry, just felt kind of, funky for a minute there. You know?” he says, as if that’s any explanation. But then he chops the potatoes. He helps Ignis season the meat. He compliments the food like always and he helps with the dishes. Ignis resolves that he has yet to, and perhaps never will, understand the intricacies of Prompto, and whatever goes on in the pop-rocks and sunshine sponge he calls a brain.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompto gets himself into some shenanigans. And by shenanigans, I mean he almost dies

Prompto is flipping through pictures trying to pick which to delete when Gladio calls him over. He’s in the middle of taking down the tent.

“Take a look,” he says, and Prompto does. There’s a rip in the tent (probably caused by him and Noctis goofing around, if he’s being honest). It’s small but it’s noticeable.

“Should I grab the patch kit?”

“Nah, we used it up already. I figured you could, you know. Do the thing.”

“Oh.”

“Will it work on this?”

Truthfully, Prompto’s not sure. He’s used to doing it by accident. But he shrugs.

“Yeah, it should.”

“Great.” Gladio just sits there watching him expectantly. So he tugs the tear back together and focuses and  _ wills _ it to be untorn, and for a long moment it seems like he’s doing a fat load of nothing. Then light sears the back of his eyelids, and Gladio gives a low whistle.

“Damn. That must never get old,” he says. Prompto laughs and shakes out his numb fingers. Gladio returns his attention to the tent.

xXx

“Ignis!”

Prompto hears the shout before he sees, and his shot is lined up so he takes it before turning back to look for Noctis and the source of his shout. He sees blood first, oozing out from between the fingers Ignis has clamped to his arm.

“Gladio, potion!” Noctis calls, and Ignis is sinking to his knees, he’s not falling but he’s doing a sort of controlled have-to-sit-down-immediately. Prompto fires off six shots at the courel approaching. That makes two left but they’re well across the clearing with Gladio, and he’s roaring and swinging his sword with no apparent issue.

Prompto crosses to Ignis and Noct rounds on him.

“Are we out?”

“If you’re out and Gladio’s out. Then yeah,” Prompto says. Ignis winces.

“It won’t be a problem. We should finish the hunt and--”

Prompto doesn’t think. He puts a hand on Ignis’ hand, where the blood is still leaking from between his fingers. He thinks fleetingly that maybe it won’t work if he can’t see it but Ignis hisses in pain and it’s like something in him snaps and spills over. He has to shut his eyes as the light flares hot beneath his hand. Ignis gasps softly.

Prompto blinks hard.

“Prompto,” Ignis says softly.

“Sorry! Sorry, did that hurt?” Prompto wrenches his hand away. But as he does, Ignis removes his too. The shirt is ruined, that’s for sure. And there’s blood on everything, but Prompto can see clean, unblemished skin.

“Wow. Just like a potion,” Noctis breathes, and his whole face is lit up in a smile. Prompto feels warmth flood his cheeks and spill down his shoulders towards his chest.

But by the time they are loading into the Regalia to head back for camp, his arm is aching like an electric shock ran up it. He peeks under the bandana almost curiously--it feels so much like the skin is torn. But there’s nothing. Empty skin, just like Ignis.

Two hours later, in the tent, he checks again. And this time there are stark black veins running up his arm starting at his fingertips (which look like they got slammed in a door). He steals Gladio’s jacket and the sleeves slip down long past his hands.

Ignis’ dinner tastes like ash, but he eats it anyways. And when they go to bed he lies awake feeling his pulse pound in his right hand. If he listens hard enough though, he can hear Ignis sigh in his sleep, and Gladio is snoring, like he does, and Noctis is the echoing void of silence he can be relied on to be when sleeping.

And if he wasn’t there they’d have had to turn in the hunt without stopping for rest, Ignis would be exhausted and Noctis and Gladio would have to clean blood from the Regalia’s seats. He clenches his hand into a fist and just breathes hard as the pain rides up his arm.

xXx

“Aw, shit.” Noctis reaches down to grab the two pieces of the mug. Then his expression brightens. “Hey, Prom.”

Prompto slouches a little lower in his chair. He already knows what’s coming, and no amount of squirming is going to prevent it.

“You want me to do the thing?”

“Yeah!”

“Do we even need that mug? Like, we have three now, what’s the big deal? One of us can use a bowl or something.”

“A bowl?” Gladio looks up from poking the fire, one eyebrow raised.

“Ignis barely even uses mugs! I’ve never seen him drink water.”

“I assure you that’s not true,” Ignis says.

“Dude, what’s the big deal?”

“Nothing. Fine, gimme the mug.” He maneuvers it back into one piece on his lap, because his right hand is still sort of fucked. But as he’s laying his left down on it he realizes that if neither of his hands function properly he’ll be worse than useless in battle. So he presses his right hand to the broken mug, thankful for the dark, and wills it whole again. 

In a second, his night vision is fried and the mug is fixed; not even the hint of a seam where it was split in two. 

Prompto’s broken fingers before. It feels like this.

“Noctis, will you at least try with the rest of your meal?”

“I ate all my meal.”

“He means the veggies, genius,” Gladio laughs. Noctis wrinkles up his nose and Prompto wants to laugh, but in the next second he can’t take it, it feels like there is scar tissue waxing and waning in his guts, and he stands up so quick that the folding chair almost goes over behind him.

“Prom?” he hears Noctis say.

“Gottapee,” he manages to get out, and takes off for the trees as quickly as possible. When he knows he’s out of sight and hopefully out of earshot, he dry heaves into the dirt a few times. Nothing’s going to come up, he can already tell. His hand feels like a lump of melted plastic and he knows it was stupid, stupid, stupid, why wouldn’t he just say something, but there’s poison in him, he can  _ see _ it and  _ feel _ it and if Gladio and Ignis and  _ Noctis _ see it they’ll know that he’s filthy inside. That there’s something ugly at the core of him.

When he returns to camp Ignis is making tea, and the warmth of the cup brings some feeling back into his hand. It’s not so bad. He can tell it’s receding already, and by the morning it’ll be gone or half-gone at least.

xXx

“Ahhh, beds for humans, thank literally every Astral,” Prompto sighs, burying his face in one of the pillows. Gladio snorts.

“What’s the tent designed for, aliens?”

“ _ Yes _ ,” Prompto counters.

“It was designed for muscle-bound freaks who love sleeping on the floor,” Noctis calls from beside Prompto, and they both crack up.

“Ah,” Ignis says, and he says it in a tone that means he’s not happy.

“What’s the issue?” Gladio asks. Prompto pushes himself up on his elbows.

“It seems the kettle isn’t working. I had hoped to make some tea.”

“So call down to the front desk,” Noctis mumbles.

“Dude, it’s like three am,” Prompto says.

“Prompto, would you be so kind?” Ignis asks. Prompto blinks. He’s holding out the kettle.

“Ah. Can’t we just wait until morning?”

“What, no, I want tea. Gladio too, right?” Noctis sits up now. Prompto rubs the back of his neck, trying not to make a face.

“Well, yeah but…”

“Is there a problem?” Ignis asks. He’s still holding out the kettle.

“It just makes me kind of tired is all.”

“Tired?” Gladio snorts. “We’re all tired. Tired is what you signed up for.”

“I mean, I don’t like making potions every night but I still do it,” Noctis says. Prompto grabs the kettle out of Ignis’ hands. What was he even thinking? And what, the wiring is probably messed up, that’s nothing to fix. He wills it back into working order, and nothing happens. He feels fine. Ignis makes the tea. They all go to bed.

He wakes up in the dark, in the bowels of the night, drenched in sweat. His chest is locked up so tight it feels like someone is sitting on it, like a current is running through his body strong enough to paralyze him. But seconds, then minutes tick by, and the pain fades away into nothing. In the bathroom he flips on the light and tugs down his shirt collar and there are black veins like a lightning-strike scar but he can tell they’re half-receded already.

xXx

It wasn’t a hard fight, it was just long. The killer wasps kept coming and Prompto kept lining up shots and he hit every single one, because  _ duh _ , and Gladio is off roaring in the background barreling into stuff.

He doesn’t see Noctis take the hit, he just hears it. He aims, fires the perfect shot and as he is watching bug guts grace the sky he hears Noctis cry out. Turns back in time to see him cleave the killer wasp in two. But then he staggers backwards, gripping his abdomen.

Prompto scans the scene quickly.  _ Stay calm, stay cool, _ Cor’s voice echoes in his head. Gladio is finishing the last wasp on the other side of the clearing, and Ignis has seen; he’s hurrying over. Prompto needs to finish up fast. He steps between Noctis and last two wasps, takes a steadying breath.  _ Don’t fucking miss _ , he thinks. But he thinks that every time, and he never misses.

Insect guts splatter in the dry dirt. Prompto gets to Noct’s side about a second after Ignis.

“How you doing buddy?” he doesn’t know where to put his hands. Ignis does, seemingly, he’s checking the wound, he has a potion at the ready.

“Ow,” Noctis croaks. The stinger has him speared through the gut. It’s definitely more than the potion can heal. Ignis is turning away to say something to Gladio and Noctis groans, reaches down and tears the stinger out.

Prompto had “wait, don’t” on his tongue but never even got the first word out. Blood is leaching into Noctis’ shirt at an alarming rate and Ignis turns back in horror and crushes the potion over his chest. Through the tear they see the injury half heal together. It’s not enough.

“Prompto,” Ignis says, but Prompto is already pressing a hand to Noct’s neck, bare skin to skin, and this is easy because Noctis bleeding out is impossible, no part of him will allow it to be. Magic burns his nerve endings on the way down his arm, and the light is blinding even through his eyelids.

“Wow, Prom,” Noct croaks. Prompto breaks into a grin. Gladio’s made it over but it’s fine, Ignis is helping Noctis sit up, checking the injury, but Prompto knows it’s gone. He rocks back on his heels and then drops out of the crouch so he’s sitting on his butt.

“Please try to be more careful. I don’t know what I would have done if Prompto didn’t get to you in time,” Ignis says, pinching the bridge of his nose as he stands. He offers Noctis a hand but Noctis pops to his feet without it.

The pain is starting to roll in like a tide; Prompto can feel it lapping at him. Gladio lays a hand on his shoulder, and he blinks. When did Ignis and Noctis get halfway to the car?

“You coming or what?” Gladio asks, and Prompto nods. Gladio offers a hand and he takes it, but when he’s up on his feet Gladio doesn’t let go. Prompto blinks at his hand, locked in Gladio’s gentle but unbreakable grip.

“Uh, need something big guy?”

“Your nose is bleeding,” Gladio says, and Prompto swipes at it. It’s not bleeding, exactly. The substance on his fingers is tar black and smells faintly rotten. 

“Oh, huh,” Prompto just says. If there are ever gears turning in his head, it feels like they’re coming to a sticky halt.

“Guys, hurry up, I’m starving!” Noct calls, and Gladio turns. Prompto takes a step to follow him. And then the poison rises up and chokes him. He gags hard, claps a hand over his mouth but a second later he’s vomiting black tar into the dirt. His vision desaturates. Sound falls out of the world.

“Gladio,” he manages to get out, and then he blacks out.

xXx

He wakes up in the Regalia. At first, all he sees is sky rushing overhead, and he doesn’t know what’s happening.

“Hey, he’s waking up,” he hears above him, and realizes he’s lying in the back, his head propped on Gladio’s lap.

“Wha’s goin’ on?” he manages to get out. There’s a clawing feeling in his chest--pain that could build into nausea. He feels like a wrung out dishcloth. He feels like mucus after it’s been spat into the sink. Noctis twists around and leans over the seat to peer at him. His face is hard, thick with some emotion Prompto doesn’t entirely recognize.

“Did you know that would happen?”

“Noctis,” Ignis says. His tone is low, a little warning.

“Does this happen every time?” Noctis asks.

“Not--I think it has to do with how damaged the thing is.”

“And you’ve always known? Why didn’t you ever say anything?” He’s angry. What’s he gotta be mad about? Everything is fine, he should be healed and they finished the hunt and they’re going back to the hotel. Prompto almost feels indignant; if he could summon the energy he might even be mad.

“I dunno. It didn’t seem relevant.” He sneaks a look up at Gladio’s face, but Gladio has his eyes fixed below Prompto’s face, somewhere around his hip.

“Uh--” is all Prompto gets out before Gladio reaches down with two fingers and tugs Prompto’s shirt up. Noctis’ mouth snaps shut. It looks like all the blood drains out of his face. Prompto already knows what he’s going to see but he still winces. Black veins spin out from his abdomen--centered at the place where Noct got hit.

The sun is too hot. The car is too hot, his skin is too small, and he feels like in the next second he’ll break, like something inside or outside him with have to give in.

“Would someone care to fill me in?” Ignis says, in what has to be his dryest tone ever.

“Doesn’t look good is all.”

“It’ll be gone in a day or two,” Prompto reassures them. Gladio snorts. 

“You want to explain this then?” He picks up one of Prom’s hands and shows Noctis. The nail beds are still black.

“Ow,” Prompto says quietly. Gladio’s mouth is pressed in a thin line. Prompto opens his mouth to say, well,  _ something _ but there isn’t anything to say when he gets there. The clouds roll by overhead. No one speaks for a while.

“Say something next time,” Gladio says, breaking the spell. Prompto feels hot behind his eyes. He feels his throat aching and that itch right before tears well up.

“Okay.”

Gladio rests a hand on his chest. The other one he lays on Prompto’s forehead.

“You’re hot,” he says.

“Thanks.”

“No, I mean sweaty.”

“Sorry.”

“How do you feel?”

“Bad.”

“Okay.” Gladio runs his fingers in Prompto’s hair for a moment. He’s messing up the gel. It’s probably messed up anyways. 

“Get some rest, okay?” he hears Noctis say. “Please.” He didn’t need to ask. Prompto’s already slipping out of consciousness. 

xXx

Noctis clicks his screen on. Empty. Off. Gladio sighs through his nose.

“You want to say something?” Noctis asks. And Gladio is going what  _ has _ to be under the speed limit. “Can we go any faster?”

“No, I’m already pushing it.”

“Urgh. I don’t see why I had to come anyways.”

“Because your pacing was pissing everyone off, and Prompto wasn’t going to rest with you there.”

Welp. That’s enough to shut him up. The anger was a nice little loop where he could pin the horrible nervous energy coiled in his stomach on Gladio’s driving or the temperature, or some little thing Ignis said. But if Gladio was going to just tear the band-aid off, which of course he was, because he doesn’t subscribe to the concept of band-aids, well, then he has to start thinking about it again. And he doesn’t want to, even a little bit.

“Every time,” he says. He sees Gladio’s fingers tighten on the wheel, so imperceptibly he probably thinks Noctis didn’t notice.

“Yeah.”

“Why didn’t he say anything?”

“What am I, a mind-reader?”

“I dunno. Since we apparently have a track record of hiding shit. Maybe you got some sort of super powers I don’t know about.”

Gladio snorts.

“I don’t have any secrets. Open book.”

“That’s what I thought Prompto was,” Noctis says, and he can  _ hear _ the whining inflection in his own voice, and it pisses him off to no end, but he can’t keep it out, not now anyways.

“So you thought wrong. Would he still be your friend if he had a few skeletons in his closet?”

“Yes.”

Gladio waves a hand like he’s just won some argument.

“There you go.”

“What do you mean, ‘there you go?’ I’m fucking worried. What if he--I’m--” He gives up on that sentence, fumes for a second, and starts a new one. “Can we hurry up?”

“We’re hurrying, okay? Quick supply run, we’ll be back before you know it.”

In his lap, lying face up, Noctis’ phone finally pings, a reply to the text he fired off to Ignis five minutes after they left.

NOCTIS: How’s he doing?

SPECS: About the same as when you left. He’s asleep.

“What’d Iggy say?” Gladio asks, after a few moments riding in silence. Noctis narrows his eyes at him. Then he folds his arms.

“You’re worried too. And here you are acting all high-and-mighty because I’m freaking out.”

“No shit I’m worried. Prompto’s my friend. Stop being an asshole. What’d Iggy say?”

“Nothing really.” Noctis flips his phone over and over in his hand. “Said he’s sleeping.”

“That’s good probably.”

“Yeah.” Noctis flips his phone over again, empty black case, empty black screen. He thinks about what magic feels like, that sizzling almost-burn, hot like an electric spark but flowing through him like water. Magic feels amazing, good enough to get addicted to and exhausting when he overuses it.

What must it feel like for Prompto? What went through his head while he was stealing away all of Noctis’ mistake?

He grits his teeth. They roar past a speed limit sign. Noctis takes a glance at the speedometer. They really are pushing it.

 

When they get back to the room Prompto is still asleep. Noctis plants himself in the chair beside his bed and refuses to move. Ignis bustles around the room doing tasks that Noct suspects are not strictly necessary or helpful, and Gladio buries his face in a book he is not reading. Noctis can tell because he hasn’t turned a page for ten minutes.

Ignis leans past Noctis and presses a hand to Prompto’s forehead. His mouth remains the thin, flat line it has been each time he’s done this.

“Still hot?” Noctis whispers. Ignis merely nods and returns to the room’s small kitchenette, where he is probably polishing something useless that belongs to the hotel.

“Were you just watching me sleep?” a ruined voice croaks. Noctis feels his heart drop into his stomach.

“Prom!”

Prompto has one eye cracked open. He looks like shit. Bone white and with the beginnings of another tar-black nosebleed (he had an epic one while they were getting him up to the room). 

“Haha. Who knew the prince is such a creep--he stops suddenly, puts a hand over his mouth and takes a sharp breath in through his nose.

“Prom?”

“Gonna puke.”

“Specs!” Noctis cries, but Ignis has already crossed the room and is thrusting a plastic trash can into Prompto’s hands. Noctis tries not to wince listening to him first just retching, and then actually puking. When he’s done he slumps against the bucket and just stays there like that for a moment, his head rested on one arm. There’s black snot leaking out his nose, and his eyes are full of those tears that spark instantly from vomiting. He’s looking at Noctis.

“You were mad.”

“Yeah.”

“You’re still mad?”

“I don’t know.” But suddenly he is mad, and he doesn’t know what to do about it. “Why didn’t you tell us? Why didn’t you tell me?” He can’t imagine an answer he would like, but he wants one anyways. Prompto doesn’t give it to him. Instead, his eyes well up with sudden tears.

And then Gladio is there, towering over them both like the big meaty tree that he is. He sits down on the side of the bed. He takes the trash can and puts it on the floor. And Prompto is trembling now, or maybe he was shaking before and Noctis couldn’t tell.

“Come on. Don’t cry, you’re gonna feel worse. You’re already dehydrated,” Gladio says. He puts an arm around Prompto’s shoulders, and Noct has never felt more useless, but now Prompto is just sobbing harder, he’s crying like he can’t stop, and Gladio wraps him up in his arms, holds him to his chest and looks at Ignis and Noctis like he doesn’t know what to do now.

Noctis wants to warp through the floor into the room below, but he doesn’t, obviously. In a few minutes Prompto is cried out. Gladio is rubbing a hand up and down his back, but in a moment Prom pushes and he lets go.

“I’m sorry,” he wheezes miserably.

“It’s okay. You’re alive, Noctis is alive. You did good, kid. I mean, I’d prefer I didn’t have to see you almost dead ever again, but hell, you’re a crownsguard no matter how you slice it.”

“It really fucking hurts,” Prompto finally says.

“I know.” 

“You need to drink something,” Ignis says. His tone indicates he is not asking.

“Astrals forbid we defy Iggy,” Gladio says, and like that the tension begins to bleed out of the room. Prompto gives an almost laugh.

He’s awake for maybe ten more minutes and then he conks out again. At some later hour, after Gladio and Ignis have turned the lights off and gone to sleep, he crawls into the bed beside Prompto, but he doesn’t sleep. For once, sleep isn’t coming.

xXx

When Prompto wakes up again it’s dark in the room, and Noctis is lying inches from his face. At first he thinks he’s asleep, but after a second Noct cracks one eye open, scoots a little closer and presses a kiss under Prompto’s eye, where the skin is puffy from crying. In the dark he looks inhuman, more god than man.

“Why didn’t you say?” Noctis whispers, breaking the spell. 

“I didn’t want you to know. This power is like some ugly curse and I thought you’d be disgusted.” Prompto says all this so quick and so rote that Noctis wonders how many times he’s thought about it.

“I thought I was going to lose you,” Noctis whispers. He’s holding the bottom of Prompto’s sleeve, he realizes. “You can’t die. I need you with me. Cursed or uncursed or whatever way you are.”

“Okay,” Prompto says.

“I’m serious.”

“I’ll do anything for you.” Those words clog in his throat, but he still says them. Noctis’ expression takes on an almost pained element.

“Okay. But don’t,” Noctis says.

“Okay.”

“If you two have energy to sustain whisper conversations Prompto needs to drink something,” Ignis calls from across the room. Noctis cracks up. It hurts to laugh but Prompto laughs anyways. It hurts to live, lots of the time but he’s always doing that.  _ Everything has a cost _ , as his mother would say.

Prompto takes the lesson and turns it over and then he discards it, because it may be  _ true _ but it is not necessarily good, and when you hunt with the future King, and you may be blessed or cursed with magic, you may bend the tenets and the rules that govern, and you may even break them, if the gods allow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I kept my promise (to me) to make this a 2 shot
> 
> publication delayed 1 day. reason: rewriting the ending  
> publication delayed 6 minutes. reason: my hands got too sticky from eating baklava   
> publication delayed 7 hours. reason: ao3 took my draft, looked at it and just gave me the big middle finger so i went to bed. also it was 5 am
> 
> Thanks to everyone who left kind and heartening comments, you always make me smile or sometimes grin smugly on the bus

**Author's Note:**

> Thank u to [Avarii](http://avarii.tumblr.com/), my blessed beta :..^) u save my life
> 
> dw kids i wrote the whole thing im just posting it in chunks once its edited
> 
> my back hurts really fuckin bad tonight lads


End file.
